Blue-collar Guy Reaches New Heights Illinois` Wargo Used To Pressure On The Job

April 18, 1993|By LARRY DORMAN, Staff Writer

PALM BEACH GARDENS -- Tom Wargo has looked down from 400 feet above the concrete, with nothing but air between his floating scaffold and the ground below. He has worked the assembly line at General Motors. He has done what he calls ``712s,`` which means 12-hour days, seven days a week.

The view from the top of the leaderboard does not frighten him.

``I`m just going to try to go out and do the same thing,`` said Wargo, the club pro from Centralia, Ill., who is three shots clear of the field and trying to make the PGA Seniors Championship his first tournament win. ``I`m not going to change anything.``

You get the feeling from this hard-bitten, muscular man of 50 that he wouldn`t change anything about the life that has brought him right here, to fame`s doorstep. Wouldn`t change the fact that he used to milk cows by hand on the 80-acre farm on which he was raised; wouldn`t change the days as an ironworker, when he tied steel at dizzying heights; wouldn`t trade the club pro job at his club, Greenview Golf Club, where his days consist of ``cutting the grass, flipping the steaks and burgers, and punching the keys`` on the cash register.

Even if his personal cash register rings up the $110,000 first-place check for a victory here, Tom Wargo isn`t going to change. He`s going to take it all in, have a good time, share it with the crowds that have come to embrace him.

``You can never have a party by yourself,`` Wargo said.

And what a party it would be if Wargo, who leads Isao Aoki by three strokes and Bruce Crampton and Tom Weiskopf by four, could actually pull this off. A self-taught player who didn`t learn the game until he was 25 and didn`t begin competition until he was 29. Wargo always figured if he turned pro at anything it would be as a bowler, a sport in which he carried a 201 average.

But when the opportunity came for him to quit his iron working days and buy into a little nine-hole course called Little Carlisle Lake, he jumped at it. That was in the 70s. Ten years later he was 22 percent owner of the 6,600- yard Greenview layout. Now he is trying his game against the best, players he used to watch on TV.

They are watching him now. Weiskopf wasted no time sowing the seeds of doubt far and wide.

``He`ll have a lot of time to think about it,`` Weiskopf said. ``He`ll be seeing a lot of names up there of guys he knows, if they play well, will put some pressure on him.``

Pressure is floating 400 feet above the concrete. It is working 712s. It is trying to find time to work on your game early in the morning or late in the evening. Wargo knows about that. Today, he`ll find out about the other.